Here We Go A-Wandering

It is one of our most treasured if ill-conceived traditions that we always do a Real Tree, and if humanly possible, cut it from a u-cut farm. Now that DOB is not really up to the trek, I usually pick the kids up from school on a day in mid-December and we go straight to the nearest farm to pick one before dark. We are very quick in our selection. (Is this tree short enough to reach the top? Is it right here? Then it is good.) And last year I finally learned how I had been cutting trees wrong my entire life so now the cutting down is quick, too.

Unfortunately this year obtaining a tree was delayed a week or more past our usual late date because of the repair work still being done on the house from the pipe leak that happened in August. The back room was finally finished, though, and I had Toolboy scheduled to come help me set up the new couch later in the afternoon, so I figured we could squeeze it in yesterday.

It was inconvenient but not surprising that the window to get the tree coincided with the commencement of a three-day storm of torrential downpours. It was surprising that the tree farm was already closed and since I still refuse to get a smart phone as long as my 14-year-old flip phone keeps working, I had no backup plan for finding or checking if another one was open. (To be perfectly honest, even my flip phone was dead, which is why I don't really want to bother with a smart phone.)

So the kids (Duchess, Dot and Dash--Deux had been coming down with something and elected to stay home) insisted that we needed to go try to find another farm. The only one whose location I was certain of was about half an hour drive away through the busiest roads in the county at rush hour in the downpour. Duchess was driving and insisted she keep driving. I told them we might arrive just to find it closed for the day or the year, but they all wanted to go anyway. We could always give up and go to Lowe's on the way back.

In due course we did arrive, and amazingly enough it was still open (we were the last customers of the day) and they were immediately overcome with its size and majesty, as it was about a square mile of Christmas trees. We drove out to the section with our preferred species, forded a small river that had formed in the downpour, and cut down our selected tree.

It was then I realized that, relying on the Christmas tree farm to provide the service, we had failed to bring anything to tie the tree to the top of the car. But first we had to get it back to the office, which was about a half a mile hike back through the downpour and dusk. So I told Dash to pick up the short end of the tree and we headed off while Duchess drove back to the office. Dot accompanied us out of an overpowering desire to commune with nature.

We had made it most of the way back and watched Duchess drive past us en route to the office when Duchess came driving back, with twine to tie the tree to the top of the car. (It was at this moment that it occurred to me that we could have done this in the first place.) So we did, although not very well, and at this point after fifteen minutes walk in the downpour I had finally noticed that I was missing my hat, which I had actually knitted myself during a triennial fit of craftiness, out of green and brown variegated yarn.

So Duchess, Dash and I decided to drive all the way back to the place we cut the tree before it got darker to try to find the hat, while Dot elected to continue on to the office and commune with hot cocoa. We found the spot again easily enough (the small river was handy in location) but it now occurred to me that a knit hat made of green and brown variegated yarn looks exactly like the ground in a Christmas tree farm in a downpour at dusk in December. Happily we did find it.

Somewhere in here the tree fell most of the way off the car and I had to try to tie it on again, but it was still threatening to careen off the side the whole time.

Then it seemed to Duchess that rather than turning around what with stumps and streams and all she would be better off to keep driving on the assumption that the roads in the tree farm would loop back around to the office sooner or later. They did, but by the time we made it back Dot had finished her trip to the office, drunk an entire cup of hot cocoa, and come back out to stand in the rain and wonder what was taking us so long.

Then everyone else who wanted cocoa got it and the man still waiting for us to leave tied the tree on extremely securely and I insisted on driving home. We were all soaked to the skin and I still had a sectional couch to set up.

Everyone thought it was the best tree expedition ever.